SLO Film Fest 2021 Review: Aimee Long’s A SHOT THROUGH THE WALL serves up uncomfortable emotional truth in story of an Asian cop shooting a black man

In the current political climate, a movie sympathizing with a cop who shoots an innocent black man is hardly the world’s safest bet. But what is art, if not a device to let audiences into worlds and perspectives they might not inherently have? And Asian-American director Aimee Long has a personal reason for telling this story, this way. Though it takes on additional resonance with a new and terrible wave of post-COVID anti-Asian racism on the rise, A Shot Through the Wall, which recently screened at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, also deals with the issue of Asian-Americans becoming sacrificial lambs and scapegoats in a system where the problem extends far beyond them.

Long very loosely based this story on the 2014 shooting of Akai Gurley, and if you aren’t familiar with that case, it’s better not to before you watch the film, so as not to play compare/contrast. While the story of real-life officer Peter Liang seems to be more clear-cut, it divided the Chinese community in New York, many of whom felt he was being thrown to the wolves as a token to cover for systemic white racism. Long’s more interested in capturing the subjective feeling of injustice that arose, and narratively stacks the deck in favor of her fictional officer Mike Tan (Midway‘s Kenny Leu) so that the rest isn’t a distraction.

We see, unambiguously, the incident that sparks the rest of the movie. Mike and his white partner Ryan (Derek Goh) come upon a group of potential truants, and when one of them runs, chase him into a brightly lit apartment building. Mike fumbles drawing his gun, and it goes off, firing a bullet into the wall. Unfortunately for all involved, there’s a person on the other side of that wall, who promptly dies. Because the victim is black, the optics are exactly as one might expect, even as there’s literally no way Mike could have had any idea who was on the other side of the wall, let alone target them. And to make it absolutely clear that Mike’s not a conscious bigot, his fiance Candace (TV’s Hawkgirl Ciara Renee) isn’t just black, but also the daughter of his police chief. Almost all the specifics of the Gurley case were different.

An initial meeting with his police union rep convinces Mike that the whole thing was an obvious accident, and will go away quickly. But as growing public outcry ensures that it won’t, his situation slowly begins to ever-worsen. Then, when he goes to an outside lawyer, the degree of media manipulation the attorney insists upon in order to nudge public sentiment feels so cynical as to be morally uncomfortable. With a grievous accident already on his conscience, how much more should Mike sacrifice his ethics in order to avoid what feels like an unfairly heavy-handed consequence? No spoilers, but he gets it a lot worse than the real Liang.

Everything is told from Mike’s point of view, which admittedly risks minimizing the shooting victim’s story. We barely know anything about the guy who took the bullet. But the stories of such victims are often told elsewhere – the focus here is on the soul of the perpetrator. Can he be exonerated? Does he deserve to be? How much punishment is enough? There’s a heavy subtext of “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Give enough people guns, and the likelihood increases that at least one will fumble in a critical moment, with stakes that are not properly prepared or trained for. The film acknowledges that the victim’s family is ruined more, but the perp’s family is ruined nonetheless. That Mike remains sympathetic is a testament to Leu’s ability to make his emotions relatable, and to Long’s deft touch finding common ground with a man we’d probably hate if we only knew him from headlines.

For an actual documentary on the Gurley case, 2020’s as-yet-undistributed Down a Dark Stairwell is the movie to see. A Shot Through the Wall is not meant to be that – it’s an emotional response to the issues raised by it, framed in a manner that allows a less popular point of view to be taken in. It’s understandable that some might critique its departure from real incidents, and be unable to view it as fiction, but if you can understand the intent, the unreal story leads to an emotional truth.